News Clips— Needle Exchange

Happy days are here again!

Yes, thanks to computer mag Fast Company, the "let's praise Seattle" days of the mid-1990s are back. Scott Kirsner's puff piece "Seattle Reboots Its Future" dishes up big helpings of the smarmy, heady complimentary prose us Needle-landers used to expect from the fawning national press. Marvel as arts guy Alex Steffan poses in tweed jacket and Converse All-Stars; cheer as head librarian Deborah Jacobs sings the praises of that ultimate in low-fi technology—books.

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And just sit back and enjoy it as Mayor Paul Schell finally connects with a sympathetic reporter. "I'm a change agent," boasts hizzoner. "I think of myself as a kamikaze mayor."

Not a bad analogy, except that the kamikaze pilots crashed into things for a specific reason, not simply because they didn't see them coming.